Open Season (Luc Vanier)

by Peter Kirby

  “Could you tell us about that, sir?”

  “Did you read her file?”

  “Just the Federal Court decision. That’s how we got your name.”

  “I can give you the full-length story or the synopsis.”

  “Let’s start with the synopsis.”

  He relaxed into his seat and brought his hand up under his chin. “Sophia was an investigative journalist in Guatemala. A pushy journalist and a successful woman. I suppose that was already two strikes against her. Just before she fled, she was writing a series of articles on how drug profits were corrupting the state. She was naming officials who were taking drug money—politicians, judges, police, the military. If you ask me, she was reckless, but we should all thank God for reckless people. She was getting threats on a regular basis, getting picked up for questioning, that sort of thing. A lot of powerful people wanted her to shut up and go away. One day her partner was hit by a car in the street. Just clipped, nothing too serious. But that night someone put a note in her mailbox. It said something like, are you brave enough to risk accidents to those you love? Which is worse, if you get killed, or you watch your family get killed? The next day she was arrested for theft. A police captain swore a statement that they had been lovers and that she had stolen $15,000 from a safe in his house.”

  Cabana looked at the two officers, held up his hand, “I know. Why does a cop have $15,000 in cash in a safe? Good question. He said it was official funds for paying informants. So it wasn’t just theft, it was interfering with police business and theft of public funds. But it was all bullshit. She’d never met the captain.”

  “She wasn’t his lover?” said Vanier.

  “Remember I said her partner was clipped by a car? Her name was Lydia. Sophia’s a lesbian. She doesn’t like men. Even if she did, she’d go through a long string of men before she settled on a policeman.” He looked up. “No offence.”

  Saint Jacques smiled.

  “Was she found guilty?”

  “No trial. Her publisher bribed someone at the prison, and she got out. She drove north to Mexico and took a flight to Montreal, claimed refugee status.”

  “Sounds like a reasonable claim, no?” Vanier asked.

  Cabana looked at Vanier. “You’re not an expert on our wonderful refugee system, are you? It’s the Canadian equivalent of the Berlin Wall at the height of the Cold War, except we’re keeping them out, not in. The administrative equivalent of minefields, barbed wire, and concrete walls, to make sure hardly anyone qualifies. They’ve written the rules so that half the people who make claims are automatically disqualified, then they stack the Refugee Board with people whose life mission is to keep Canada wholesome, white and Christian.”

  “In Sophia’s case, there was another problem. She hired the worst immigration lawyer in the city. She got his name from a guy at CBSA. Imagine. That’s like asking the police to recommend a defence lawyer.”

  Saint Jacques smiled again.

  “It’s a bit of a conflict, no?” Cabana said.

  “So she lost her case,” said Vanier.

  “In a hearing, there are five buttons you absolutely have to push.” Cabana held up his hand and starting counting off. “That you suffered persecution based on race, religion, nationality, social group, or political opinion. You must actually be afraid.” He held up a third finger as though giving a lecture. “Your fear must be rational. The government can’t or won’t protect you and, finally, there’s must be no safe place in your own country.” He kept his hand up, the five fingers splayed. “If you don’t push all five buttons, you’re finished.”

  “And where did she fail?” Vanier asked.

  “She didn’t fail, her lawyer failed her. He’s lazy, notorious for failed claims. He claimed she was unjustly accused. So, she came off looking like someone running from the law. A criminal fugitive and not a refugee.”

  “When she came to see me, it was too late. It’s next to impossible to file new evidence in an appeal. You have to go on the evidence that was before the Refugee Board, and there was no good evidence before the Board. So she lost on a hopeless case, and it was a hopeless case on appeal. I tried to argue that her counsel was incompetent, but the court wouldn’t even let me make the argument. The court said she had her opportunity to make her case and lost.”

  “What was the next step?”

  “There was no next step.”

  “No appeal?”

  “She could ask the Minister for a special permit. I told her that. But I also told her that there was as much chance of that happening as, I don’t know, the Pope getting circumcised at the Wailing Wall. Showers, the current minister, is completely anti-immigration. He’s done his best to rig the rules so it’s next to impossible to qualify as a refugee. And he hasn’t issued a single Minister’s permit since he’s been in office.”

  “What was the last time you saw her?”

  “It would’ve been a few days after the Federal Court’s decision. Two months ago.”

  “And you haven’t heard from her since?”

  “Not a word. Look, she was mad at me. Couldn’t understand how I couldn’t make things right. That’s not unusual. In any event, there was nothing I could do for her. I told her the process, there would be a removal order, and she could choose to leave. If she didn’t leave voluntarily, she could be picked up and deported.”

  “Do you have her address?”

  Cabana one-finger-typed on the keyboard and read out an address from the computer screen. It was Delaney’s address on Oxford Street.

  “We’ve tried there. She moved.”

  The lawyer raised himself up from his chair and went over to a grey filing cabinet. He flicked through the folders, pulled a file out, and sifted through the papers. Then he pulled out a yellow sheet with handwritten notes on it.

  “I have a note here from the last meeting.” He was reading as he walked back to his chair. “She said if I wanted to contact her, I should do it through David Reynolds.” He picked up a pen and scribbled on a small pad of scrap paper that had been cut and stapled into an uneven notepad.

  “Here are the coordinates of Mr. Reynolds. He’s a good guy, works with refugees.”

  They drove west along Saint-Antoine and crossed Atwater. The condominium developments were spreading like weeds, and there was construction on every block. Once, the land had been too close to the expressway for anything but cheap apartments, rooming houses, and industrial buildings. Now it had become prime real estate, shuttered factories waiting their turn to become beehive condos or lofts for hipster artists, and rundown apartment blocks destined to become piles of bricks. The people who had lived in the area for years were under pressure from the encroachment, but nobody cared. They were only tenants, and all it took to move them was money. There was a sadness about it all. Neighbourhoods in decline die publicly, like roadkill.

  The house they were looking for was on Saint-Augustin in the Saint-Henri neighbourhood. It was the kind of street city planners have nightmares about, a mixture of single family homes, duplexes, triplexes, apartment buildings, a factory and a couple of workshops. On the west side, all the buildings backed onto the train tracks. Vanier parked in front of a factory that had been converted to artists’ studios. The address Cabana had given them was a white two-storey home. It had a small porch in the front, and a white picket fence low enough to step over. If it hadn’t been for the green carpet of fake grass and the iron grilles on the ground-floor windows to keep the addicts out, it could have been a postcard house in the country. Two women were sitting on folding chairs on the porch, watching Vanier and Saint Jacques as they approached. Vanier tried a smile. “Is Mr. Reynolds home?”

  The women said nothing, just stared back. Vanier reached down and fiddled with the latch on the gate. When it swung open, the whole fence shook with the movement, the wood rotting under the daily showers from neighbo
urhood dogs. The front door opened before they got to it, and the guy in the doorway surprised Vanier. He was wearing grey cords, a black T-shirt and a black cardigan. He clutched a worn black book in his hand. He couldn’t have looked more like a priest if he’d worn a collar.

  “Mr. Reynolds?” Vanier said.

  The man nodded but the rest of him was immobile.

  “Can we come in?” Vanier said.

  He stood like a wall, didn’t say a word.

  “We’re here about Sophia Luna. We’d like to talk to you.”

  Reynolds took a breath. “I have no idea where she is.”

  “That’s the point, sir,” said Vanier. “Neither do we.”

  Reynolds looked at Saint Jacques. “We’re investigating Sophia Luna’s kidnapping.”

  “Kidnapping? Who are you?”

  “Montreal police. I’m Inspector Vanier. This is Sergeant Saint Jacques.”

  Reynolds looked down at the two women, who had been following the conversation. “You better come in.”

  They followed him through a dark hallway and into a room at the front of the house, a tiny office with a desk, a folding metal chair, and a couple of filing cabinets. Reynolds lifted papers off the metal chair, dumped them on the desk, and looked around.

  “I’ll have to get another one.”

  “I can stand,” said Saint Jacques, but Reynolds was out the door before she finished.

  Vanier was trying to make sense of the mess of papers on the desk. Every manila folder bore someone’s name, and there were court documents lying around, some marked up with pencilled notes. Saint Jacques was studying the National Geographic map on the wall, half covered with red, green and yellow tacks.

  “I’ve always loved maps,” she said.

  Reynolds came back with another folding chair in his left hand, the black book still clutched in his right. He saw Vanier leaning over the desk. “I thought you were here to talk about Sophia.” He unfolded the steel chair for Vanier.

  “We are. You work with refugees. She was a refugee.”

  “Let’s get something clear, Inspector. Here at Welcome House, we help refugees. That’s what we do. The authorities don’t like us. So if you’re here to probe the organization, I’ll just fold the chairs back up and ask you to leave.”

  “All I care about is Sophia Luna, nothing else,” Vanier said.

  Reynolds sat down behind the desk, piles of paper between him and his guests. He moved a couple of piles off to the side, put the black book down on the desk, and leaned forward. “So what’s this about her being kidnapped?”

  “Sophia Luna was kidnapped last night, sir, in Old Montreal,” Saint Jacques explained. “Snatched off the street.”

  “And we’re trying to find out who snatched her,” Vanier added. “To do that we need to know about her and about who might have kidnapped her. I understand your organization may have been helping her, so you may know something that will help us.”

  Reynolds leaned forward, placed his palm on the black book. “Sophia Luna upset many important people in Guatemala. She managed to escape to Canada and claimed refugee status. She told me, and I believe her, that she’ll be killed if she goes back to Guatemala. There’s no question in my mind. If she was forced to return she would be killed. So perhaps those people have decided to follow her to Canada. Who else would want to kidnap a refugee?”

  “What were you doing for her?”

  “We helped her find a new place to live.”

  “You helped to hide her?” said Vanier.

  “We helped her stay alive.”

  “When did you last see her?”

  “Four days ago.”

  “And how was she then?”

  Reynolds thought for a moment. “Now that you ask about it, it was unusual. She sounded upbeat. She’s been under a lot of pressure, and most days she went from subdued to depressed. I remember I was surprised at how well she was doing. It was almost as though she had found hope. There was nothing specific that I can think of, it was just the way she talked, the way she sounded.”

  “And she said nothing specific about any changes in her life?”

  “Nothing. We just talked about general stuff. I reassured her of our support, we talked about the heat. It was very warm in her room. But nothing specific, I’m afraid. I can’t think of anything that might help.”

  “Where was she living?” Saint Jacques brandished her notepad.

  Reynolds turned back to Vanier for assurance.

  “I gave you my word.” Vanier said. “This is just between us. I’m not working for immigration. We need to see where she was living, look through her things. We’re investigating a kidnapping and murder. We need to search her room.”

  “Murder?” He picked up the book.

  “She went to see a lawyer on the night she was kidnapped. He was killed.”

  Reynolds stood up. “I’ll take you there. It’s not far. But please, people’s lives are at risk.”

  “It’s between you and us,” Vanier said. “No one else.”

  Vanier and Saint Jacques followed Reynolds north and east for about twenty minutes, and parked outside a three-storey building on Milton that looked like it was still standing only because the adjoining buildings were propping it up. The brickwork was sagging to fill the gaps left by crumbling mortar, and what paint remained was peeling in big flakes.

  Reynolds fingered a fat bunch of keys as he mounted the steps. He chose one and opened the front door, beckoning over his shoulder at the two officers. They followed him into a dark hallway. Nothing happened when Reynolds flipped the light switch. “It’s a rooming house. Nobody puts any money into it. Don’t even replace light bulbs.”

  Saint Jacques pulled out a flashlight and went in front. “Which floor?”

  “Our people are all on the third floor,” he said.

  With the front door closed, the place was quiet as a mausoleum, except for the faintest noise of a radio playing somewhere. Vanier fought the urge to cover his mouth and nose from the smell, the wet sweetness that sets off alarms in everyone who’s dealt with cockroaches. Reynolds followed them up to the third floor and pointed down the hallway. “Hers is room 34.”

  Reynolds pulled out the bunch of keys and opened the door.

  The room had been ransacked. Clothes had been tipped out of drawers and piled in the middle of the floor. Anything with a lining had been slashed open. The mattress and boxspring were propped against the wall, each cut open with long slashes. Pieces of a small plastic radio lay beneath the window, as though someone had brought a heavy boot down on it.

  Vanier looked around, trying to make sense of the disorder. “First Bélair’s place. Then this? I wonder if they found what they were looking for?”

  The room was small even for one person. With the three of them, it felt like standing in a wardrobe. Vanier noticed a black cable plugged into the wall outlet. “Her computer is gone. She’s a journalist. She would have had a computer.”

  “She owned a laptop. I’ve seen it,” said Reynolds.

  Vanier turned to Saint Jacques. “I don’t see any pads either, or paper.”

  A quick inventory turned up nothing to do with a journalist’s trade except a beaker on the floor with pencils and pens spilled out of it. “Sylvie, get a team up here to see what they can find.”

  Saint Jacques pulled out her phone. “Sure.”

  Vanier turned to Reynolds. “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “It’s not much, I know. But we don’t have money. This place is a last resort, but usually temporary, until we can find a more permanent place. She was going back to a prison cell, maybe worse. It’s better than a prison cell.”

  “Where’s the bathroom?”

  “It’s communal.”

  “Show me.”

  They went back out to the hallway. Vanier d
idn’t need a guide; his nose was good enough. The toilet had developed its own presence over the years, and you could have found it in a blackout.

  It was cramped. Sitting on the toilet seat, you could lean your chin on the tiny sink. The toilet bowl was discoloured and pitted, with black hairline cracks. The cistern was high up on the wall, with a chain hanging down. Vanier stood on the edge of the toilet bowl and lifted the cover of the cistern. It was empty, except for water and rusting parts. He climbed down, sat on the toilet and leaned forward to look under the sink. He reached up and around the underside of the sink. Again, nothing.

  Then he got up and moved into the bathroom. The smell was less intense, only the lingering odour of soap. The bathtub was an ancient claw-foot, with a yellow stain running down from the dripping tap. The shower curtains seemed to be held together by soap scum and mould. There was no cabinet, no place to store anything. Vanier imagined the tenants carrying all they would need to the bathroom, and then carrying everything back again to their rooms. He waved Reynolds outside and closed the door to make more room. Then he got down on his hands and knees to look under the bathtub and the sink. Nothing.

  He opened the door. Reynolds was standing there. “The people in the other rooms, can we talk to them?”

  “Sure, but maybe it’s best if I ask the questions,” Reynolds said. He led Vanier back down the hallway, knocked on the first door, and spoke quietly against the frame. “Philippe, it’s me, Dave.”

  After a few moments the door opened a few inches, and a gaunt, middle-aged man peered out through the crack, both hands holding onto the door. He had sunken eyes and cheeks, but managed a half-smile at Reynolds. He ignored Vanier.

  “Philippe, sorry to bother you. It’s about Sophia. You know, the lady in 34?”

  “Yes, Sophia. Such a wonderful person.”

  “She’s missing, Philippe. And Mr. Vanier here is trying to find her. Someone has been in her room. We were wondering if you saw anything unusual, or heard anything.”

  Philippe shot a glance at Vanier and turned back to Reynolds. “You know me. I have nothing but my music. If I’m not playing, I have my headphones on. I would go mad otherwise. I went out for food yesterday but that was all. I have been here all the time, but not here. I am in my music, waiting.” He looked at Vanier. “But Sophia, are you going to find her?”